The Bigger Picture Gabrielle Louise H. Aves Victory Christian International School
When I was seven years old, I witnessed two of my friends sitting together, laughing, at lunch. As I sat down next to them, my friend sighed—almost obnoxiously, really. “Does anyone have any food?” she asked. My other friend was flippant, but responded anyway. “I have a pack of Oreos.” Of course, she took delight in this. She sat up straight and excitedly asked, “Can I have some?” “Oh, I already ate them.” We both stared at our friend, and my first friend had a look on her face as if she had been betrayed in the most offensive way. Maybe she did feel that way. Growing up, I began to take in my surroundings. I discovered that Santa Claus wasn’t real. Neither was the Tooth Fairy. I found out that the reason my hamster had died was because I overfed it, and I didn’t even know that was possible. And although these may seem like puerile things to hold onto, I can never forget them. I was deceived, even in the littlest ways possible, and that feeling of treachery can never really be forgotten, though they can definitely be repressed. With everything that’s happening with the world—everything that’s happening with yourself—it gets harder and harder to keep looking past every difficulty. You absorb it, and it begins to tear at you until you eventually fall and it can no longer rip any part of you. But that’s just you. What about the person sitting behind you in class? Or the man serving you when you and your friends decide to go out for brunch? Each person has a
tear, and people have their way of masking it. You have to take a moment to think, what happens to them? We all have the compulsion to help, to aid. As much as possible, we try to push away the fact that we’ve been burnt or torn or bent, but that’s not much use. No matter how much we want to help, we cannot share what we don’t have. What is the point of offering our help and our hope when we don’t even have any to give? Imagine banks attempting to give the people money from vaults that are penniless. Or take in that short aforementioned excerpt of my life, with my two friends and the Oreos. It is an effort that pays no result, because the source was never there to begin with. There are so many problems in this world that we try to solve, and yet we never bother to solve our own equations. We leave blanks under our own names, but we desperately try to scribble and keep on trying with the people around us—which isn’t bad, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just an empty purpose. We try to end their sufferings, but we continue to suffer in an overwhelming pool of our own problems and barely manage to keep our hand out to reach for the surface of hope. But believe me, it’ll be so much better if you take a step back. Tiny or elephantine, it will count. Take your sight off the numerous problems you try to surpass that were never yours, because while you’re drowning under that pool of problems, there is someone on the other side believing you will claw yourself out to be there with them, to be able to help them. I know this because I’ve tried. It was pointless. The only feeling worse than being tricked is knowing that you’ve deceived somebody who had been holding out for you, believing that you could possibly do something to change them. Believing that you could possibly do something to change something for them.
But you can. You always can. There is hope within you that is waiting to be given, and all you have to do is take a step back from the bigger picture and begin to appreciate the smaller images first. Start loving yourself, no matter how hard. Do it for the young girls you know that are struggling with their bodies. Start believing in yourself, no matter how undoable your goal may seem. Do it for the people who believe in you already, because they’re just waiting for you to start doing the same. Start trying your best to enjoy life as much as possible. Do it for the hardworking men and women operating to assist you with your needs, because God knows they deserve it. The bigger picture is not figuring everything out in one go. The bigger picture is made of smaller images—captures of the smaller things that seem to only be done for you, but in the end, it does so much more. Maybe it’s a pack of Oreos or an endeavor to help someone get better. It doesn’t matter. You can become a beacon that shares light to those who need it, because you have the luminosity that will show them the way.